


Snow After Fire

by Bearujeria (smallcop), LunaLepus



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Character Death, Character Redemption, Family, Fix-It, Friendship, Gen, Heavy Angst, Lots of Water, Other, Redemption, Romance, Water, dragon magic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-14
Updated: 2015-10-25
Packaged: 2018-04-26 08:27:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4997797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smallcop/pseuds/Bearujeria, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LunaLepus/pseuds/LunaLepus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What good would gold do you?” His voice is monotone, and not entirely his own. “What can gold do for anyone dead?” </p><p> </p><p>Or, in which a dragon flees his ending.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

Perhaps it is to avoid some great sadness,  
as in a Restoration tragedy the hero cries "Sleep!  
O for a long sound sleep and so forget it!"  
that one flies, soaring above the shoreless city,  
veering upward from the pavement as a pigeon  
does when a car honks or a door slams, the door  
of dreams, life perpetuated in parti-colored loves  
and beautiful lies all in different languages.

\- Frank O' Hara

_Sleeping on the Wing_

 

 

**I.**

  


Thorin is dead.

Bilbo stands atop Raven Hill, quiet and alone. The snow falls around him solemnly, glinting bright in the sun. It hurts his eyes to look, but he does not turn away. Dark stretches of black blood ebb across the carnage far below him, and above, eagles cut across the pale morning sky.

His hands shake. He can see stout silhouettes begin to make their way up the mountain. His friends, perhaps-- but he cannot find the voice to call for them.

_Thorin is dead._

Some hollow feeling rests in the pit of his stomach, the way a foot falls through the air when one is expecting a stair that doesn’t exist. His hands feel decidedly empty, as though stretching into the night, seeking guidance in an unfamiliar house.  

Thorin had clutched his hand. Just moments ago.

Thorin is **dead.**

Idly, his fingers, warm and wet with blood, slip into his pocket. He pinches the metal of his ring, not slipping it on, but rolling it in his hand.

He does not turn away.

Around him, fragments of rock and ruin shudder in the ice. He thinks, distantly, that the cliff is giving way. The air around him curls and hisses darkly in the shape of laughter, and in the corner of his vision an eye peeks from under the snow, golden and relentless as a wildfire.

"I told you, little thief,” a terrible voice says, creaking like the hinges of an enormous iron gate. "You were only the means to an end."

* * *

  


Bilbo blinks and shifts away from jagged line of rock, realization slowly dawning on him that he is not surrounded by rubble, but the dull, lusterless hide of a dying dragon. A dragon that should already be _dead._

He tries to speak, but only makes a high-pitched whine at the back of his throat, and stumbles backwards off his feet.

"My, my, how quickly the burglar is robbed," Smaug continues, lifting his head and letting the snow fall away. He lets out a shuddering breath. His massive body is curled around them like a  wall, with the only escape in the small gap between his tail and jaws. "Of both his fortune and his senses. Are you _frightened?"_

Bilbo scrambles to the center of the circle as Smaug’s dark curling laughter follows him.

"As you well should be." A purple tongue slides across enormous white teeth. "Oakenshield dead, your friends far away. Who will stand between you and the _dragon?"_ He shifts again, trying to close in tightly around Bilbo. He can see where Smaug has been struck, an open wound steaming on the snow, but sickly yellow and glittering, more like molten gold than blood.

"Would it please you? To die beside your," Smaug sucks in a wet, ragged breath and laughs. "... _friend?_ Would it be an _honor,_ little thief?" He reaches out a huge, leathery talon towards Thorin’s cold body; Bilbo can feel his heart hammer in his ears. "And what sort of honorable burial would there be for both of you, if I did not even leave your small, pathetic bodies? If I," --he tugs Thorin’s body a foot closer, by his boots-- "devoured you _both?"_

Bilbo reaches for his sword and gets to his feet in one movement, charging forward with it in his shaking hands before he knows what he is doing.

"Do. _Not."_  He hisses in a strange and terrible voice. The sword hovers a foot above the dragon’s eye. Bilbo can see himself reflected in a shimmering ring of gold, face twisted in shadows and smeared blood. He does not turn away.

"Oh, _spare_ me!"Smaug snarls, twisting his head and knocking Bilbo off his feet. He pulls away from Thorin, only to lift himself above Bilbo. His voice is half-mad with pain. "Kill me! _You!?_ If I could be so lucky! Exact your empty revenge, then! _Quickly!"_ Smaug sputters, his elbows shake and he falls forward, twisting the arrow at an angle. "What death is worse, I do not know! To be finished by an army of dwarves or struck by that thrice-damned bowman!” His voice is wavering, desperate and painful, but not even Bilbo can muster pity for him. “I would rather be slain by the thief in the shadows!”

Bilbo feels his breath catch. “You’re afraid.”

"Do not lecture _me_ on _cowardice,_ O he who walks unseen,” Smaug hisses. “No gold, no shelter, and men come to hack me to pieces as _relics!_ Me, a _Fire Drake of the North!”_

Bilbo realizes he still has one hand in his pocket. The blood on his hands is drying sticky, still rolling the ring between his forefinger and thumb.

"...gold?” Bilbo asks in a small voice.

"For that I had all of Erebor and did not bring a single coin,” Smaug whines, twisting in on himself, curling the way an insect does before it dies on its back.

The ring grows warm in his palm. He hears his own voice, twisted and breathy in his ear, _ask him ask him ask him you_ _**fool.** _ He turns away to look at Thorin’s broken body on the ice.

"What good would gold do you?” His voice is monotone, and not entirely his own. “What can gold do for anyone _dead?”_

"Do you really not know?” Smaug sneers. “Did your… _companions_ not explain the doom they sent you to?”

Bilbo looks to them now, already halfway up the hill.

"I wasn’t sent.” He swallows. “I volunteered.”

"Under false pretense.” Smaug tilts his head. “But betrayal does not surprise me from the friends of a _thief_ and a _liar._ I’m sure they’d thought you’d die in the attempt.”

" _You’re_ dying, not me,” Bilbo reminds him, perfectly still. The weight in his pocket rolls forward. Smaug stares at him cruelly through a lidded eye.

"Do you think I sat on such a hoard through so many years for the enticing view?” He asks, low and dangerous. “Do you suppose it is only a very comfortable place to nap?”

"I-- I don’t--”

“ _NO!_ ” he thunders. The ice beneath him cracks and warps under the weight of his voice. “ _YOU DO NOT!_ YOU KNOW NOTHING! Nothing of _POWER_ ! Nothing of _MAGIC!_ That which I had and could have lain to waste every mortal from here to the shores of the West, all slipped through my fingers.” He moans, “Along with my life. You know of _nothing_ you wretched creature!”

"M-magic? Like a wizard?”

"I am like _nothing!_ I am a _DRAGON!_ Do you see me peddling about this world offering my assistance to _rabbits_ and _**mortals?!** _ ” Smaug’s body jolts unnaturally, and he screams a terrible sound, like steel armor being shredded. “Enough! Kill me if you intend to! I will not be so degraded!”

Bilbo does not hear him. There is a sound all around his ears like the roaring of a fire. He blinks slowly, hand in his pocket pulsing and warm.

"You could save them,”  Bilbo says, staring down the edge of his sword, so heavy in his grip.

"If I were not _dying,”_ Smaug snarls. “And if I did not hate Thorin Oakenshield and all his damned kin, and if I worked for _charity_ , which I do _not,_ because as I have said before: _**I AM A DRAGON!”** _

"I did not say for charity.” Bilbo says, unmoved now by Smaug’s shrieking. He looks down where his wrist meets the lining of his pocket and he swallows hard. “I have something.”

"Oh? You would trade away the heart of the mountain for it’s king _again?”_ Smaug laughs weakly. “Do you think he would drop you from this very cliff or wait to try you for treason and behead you before all of his kin?”

"It is not the Arkenstone,” Bilbo says sharply. He hesitates, turning slowly to his right, where the sun is rising over Thorin’s empty body on the ice. The hand in his pocket clenches into a fist. He turns to Smaug, eyes dark and cold. “It is… something made of gold, but far more precious.”

He plucks the ring from his pocket and lets the morning light gleam across its surface, watching its reflection in the slim black pupil of Smaug’s shining yellow eye.

"Oh, my," Smaug says breathlessly. His body goes still, and he grins wide and terrible. “Yes, little thief. For that, I could save him and his kin.”

A pack of voices reach the edge of the ice at the same time Smaug opens the dark, bruise-colored cavern of his mouth. Bilbo hears his name called, distantly, distracted by the enormity of Smaug’s huge and curving teeth. He steps forward, drops the ring into the dragon’s maw, and feels something in his ribcage snap. Bilbo reaches to grab it back in the same moment he sees the hinges of Smaug’s jaw snap shut around him. His movements jerk to a stop, a breath pauses in his lung, and all the world grows dark.

 


	2. Chapter One | After

 

 

Thorin wakes with a start, his body arching against the flash of lighting barreling into his room. There is a hot, deep burning sensation in his sternum that tastes like iron in his throat. The night air is too warm, stagnant and bitter in his mouth. A shock of thunder rolls across his body, into his tremoring heart.

He’s certain he’s been dreaming. There’s the faintest flickering image behind his eyelids of black blood on white snow, of the morning light catching on something golden, but the more he tries to hold unto it the more it slips away, chased by the sharpening awareness of his surroundings.

Another flash of lightning lights the room once, twice. Strange shadows lurch from the sparse furniture of his bedroom, then stretch and disappear across the wooden floor. The cabin buckles and creaks under the weight of an early spring storm.

He listens awhile longer, to the drone of pattering rain, and the muffled crash of thunder. From the next room, Dis’s voice reaches him warm and low, hanging like smoke in the air. It is either very late, or very, very early. She should be sleeping. Instead, he can hear her ambling about the cabin, rustling bags and tightening straps. Packing and repacking her sons’ bags, probably. She’s singing a song, the words curling dark and soft through the walls of the cabin.

 

“ _The mountain smoked beneath the moon;_

_The dwarves, they heard the tramp of doom._

_They fled their hall to dying fall_

_Beneath his feet, beneath the moon.”_

 

A clap of thunder drowns out the rest of the song into a distant murmur. In his ears, he can make out the words from memory.

His chest burns deeply, probably residue stuck from spending too long in an unventilated forge. He should have a glass of water. He should reach for his coughing rag, and try to dislodge the grime before he falls asleep again. It’s only, his eyelids are so heavy, and his muscles are so sore, as though he’s been fighting for his life. Sleep will mend him.

So he lies down and rolls comfortably onto his shoulder, to the side where he can see candlelight flickering underneath the door. It breaks into pieces where his sister paces across the threshold. The thought occurs to him, strangely foreign, that he feels very safe in this house, nearly falling apart in a spring rain, with his sister at the door, like a sentinel in the dark.

At some point his eyes drift shut again, and his sleep is dreamless.

❦

 

He wakes late. The sun is up. In his haste to catch up with the daylight, he fails to notice the raised line of flesh down the center of his chest: a scar as bright red and twisted as a serpent.

* * *

  


Daylight rolls into the shire, sleepy and fat, air thick and hot with soon-to-come rain when Gandalf the Gray comes traipsing down from over the hill one morning in April. The sun shines dazedly and heedless. Silver storm clouds loom in the west, bumbling their way eastward. Everything is green and brown and golden -- the soft warm road under his feet, the gently curving trees above his head. The leaves and grass mutter and whisper in the breeze as he passes them, like gossiping wives too old and vigilant for new guests.

He continues on, past the curious blinking eyes of children peeking between fence posts, and the grim, shadowed faces of their parents at the windows. The air is swollen with humidity, and something else, elusive and unnamed.

The path grows less and less dense, giving way to an all-dirt trail, grass dried and dead at the edges, with dark and colorless weeds and brambles poking out at him. They cling to the edges of his robe. He passes underneath a gnarled, sickly oak tree, hanging over the edge of the hill, leafless and grey. The air goes still and stagnant, and tastes bitter in his mouth.

He reaches a gate, half knocked over by a dead and overgrown primrose bush. Just beyond, he can see crumbling stairs leading to a door that might have been green once. It’s surface is sun-bleached and cracked, with huge tarnished brass knob in the middle, some sickly shade of grime and rust.

“Oh my,” he says aloud, taking a long draw from his pipe. “Oh my, my.”

There is a loud, frustrated scream from somewhere behind a patch of thicket, around the corner. Gandalf manages to pull it away with the end of his staff to see a sweaty, dark haired little hobbit, clothes askew with a basket toppled beside him in the dirt beneath his knees.

“You _ghastly_ hole!” He shrieks, gathering his things. “You wretched, _wretched--!_ Oh, I’ll burn you to the ground and we’ll all have a great laugh about it you ugly, horrid--”

Gandalf clears his throat, and the hobbit nearly falls over in shock.

“Excuse me, my good sir. Gandalf the Grey, at your service.” Gandalf says, coming forward to address the hobbit properly.

“Holmann Green, at yours.” The hobbit replies warily.

“I believe I’ve found myself quite lost.”  Gandalf sucks on his pipe. “Quite lost indeed.”

“You certainly have,” the hobbit looks at him quizzically, standing up. “Ending up at this terrible place. Doubt anyone means to find themselves here.” he sighs, and points back down the road Gandalf’s just come. “Hobbiton’s got one road. Go straight back to the beginning, and turn left at the fork for Bree.”

“No no,” Gandalf smiles tightly, “ I’m looking for Bag End, home of a Mr. and Mrs. Baggins, and hopefully their son, Bilbo.”

“Oh.” the little hobbit looks taken aback. “Well, the sir and his missus are dead. Mrs. Belladonna for four years. Ol’ Bungo’s been gone twice that long, I reckon.”

“Oh,” Gandalf looks suddenly stricken. “Oh my. I did not know. They were dear friends of mine.”

“My condolences, then.” the hobbit nods his head. “But nobody’s seen Mr. Bilbo since. Though I reckon at least a third of the shire’d feel more than blessed to never _hear_ from him again. Between the Tooks and the Bagginses and the _Sackville-_ Bagginses. ”

“Whatever do you mean?” Gandalf asks.

“He pays me weekly to pick up his mail and keep the path clear in front of the house. Every tuesday. No return address, though.” Holmann lifts the basket, and turns to the smial with a bitter look. “I think he mostly does it so they can’t declare him dead or missing and take the house.” He grimaces. “Shoddy thing it is. Can’t say why anyone would want the damned place. Won’t step inside myself. Wretched thing would probably come crashing down on my skull.”

Holmann looks back up to the wizard, but only sees the tip of his grey hat disappearing down the road.

  


* * *

  


It takes him all of two seconds to realize that something is violently, _sickeningly_ wrong.

Soft light gleams atop his eyelids, warm and frighteningly unfamiliar. This is not the dim, dank light prying into his treasure cavern, or the cold pale reflection of gold twinkling under him.

Golden eyes snap open and he snarls, nearly nauseous with fury.

_Sunlight._

He springs up, scream caught in his throat when some blindingly white trap catches his limbs.  He slashes all around him, only to find with immense horror that his beautiful coal-black talons have gone soft and blunt. He twists and turns and then, for a heart-stopping moment, he’s falling.

His shoulder hits the floor beneath him with a very dull _thud._ His bindings come loose and he wrenches himself away, only to knock into some hard surface to his left. There’s so much light in this room it’s disorienting. His head feels so small, his limbs are stiff. His body bent at an odd angle. He’s going to be sick.

He feels so soft, so fragile. Impossibly small. Like he might be made of air and water.

Something gleaming falls from above him and lands loudly on the floor, rolling and wobbling until it topples just under his nose.

There are familiar golden eyes, blinking up at him, but the face they sit in is human. Brown and leathery and gaunt, scarred and--

\--and _human._

He blinks, and then screams, and then he is sick down the front of his nightshirt.

A door opens across the room and bangs loudly against the wall; and a little creature stumbles in, nearly tripping over himself and losing the platter in his small, fat hands. Smaug blinks away tears in his eyes, takes a shaky breath and tries to place his smell, only to feel another wave of bile at his throat when he realizes he can’t smell anything but the mess he’s just made.

But he doesn’t need his nose to recognize the pale, quivering creature looking down at him with unabashed terror.

“M-Mr. Pendragon are you alr-” he squeaks, the rest of the words caught in a choke.

Smaug lunges, eager to wrap his blunt, fleshy hands around the burglar’s little throat. There is a flash of silver and suddenly his head feels like it must be splitting down the middle. The world topples sideways and bleeds away into darkness.

He hits the ground, unconscious.

“Oh,” Bilbo Baggins says, clutching a tea tray with trembling hands. “Oh, dear.”

* * *

  


The tavern where they’ve decided to meet is dark and warm, and muddled with the odor of too many bodies and not enough space, or ventilation. Tiny mismatched lanterns litter every wall and ceiling and wooden pillar, casting yellow light over the faces of his companions, making them shadowy and unfamiliar. A dark place for dark business, he supposes.

He feels strange. His clothes are too stiff, and

“And what’s got you so dour?” His brother slaps him hard on the back. “Drink your ale and eat your ham.”

“Yes, _mother.”_ Fili rolls his eyes, shoving Kili on the shoulder. Kili grins and stuffs a roll in his mouth.

“You were all excited last night,” Kili insists. “Really though, _you_ look like mum when you’re worried.”

“He’s late.” Fili shrugs.

“He’s _always_ late. Remember the time he ended up in the broom closet on his way to the kitchen?” Kili snickers. Fili snorts and rolls his eyes. “He’s _fine._ Just a bit lost. Always finds his way, though.”

“Yeah, he does.” Fili nods, expression gentling.

“ _Yeah,_ so stop making mum faces.” Kili pouts. “You’re making me feel guilty and I haven’t even done anything _fun_ yet.”

“Shut _up_.” Fili hits him in the shoulder. “Drink your ale and eat your ham.”

“Yes _mother._ ” Kili grins around a mouthful of his dinner.

And still, Fili cannot shake the strangeness in the air, as though someone’s changed the furniture all around the room around when he wasn’t looking. The wizard does not help much, staring into the space above him with an empty gaze and ancient frown. He huffs his pipe and goes mostly ignored by the rest of the table, sending strange shapes of twisted smoke into the dark, looking like distressed letters in a forgotten language.

“I know what you need, lad.” Says the tinker who sits beside him-- Bifur’s younger cousin, though older than him by several decades. _Bofur._ (He had introduced himself sometime-- earlier. Earlier than just hours ago. Perhaps-- in Ered Luin, sometime.)

“What’s that?” Fili blinks.

“Somethin’ stronger than this piss water’s what.” Bofur winks and if Fili should be baffled by his forwardness he forgets, and laughter bubbles up inside him. Bofur claps him on the back and then calls for the barmaid.

“What’s to be said for something stronger for my friends, lass?” he asks.

“Aye!” shouts the table behind him. She inclines her head.

“A round of pints of Belaghnen Ale?” Bofur calls, waving his arms dramatically.

“Aye!” the table roars.

“On mister Dwalin’s tab here thank you!”

“Aye!” the table cheers, with the exception of mister Dwalin.

“Ye rat faced cheap son of a bastard!” Dwalin howls from the seat opposite Kili, but his eyes are smiling.

“Aye!” Bofur yells back, and the table falls to pieces in laughter.

If it is the ale or the hour Fili doesn’t know, but he inclines his head with an awkward sort of smile, tips his drink back, and lets himself believe that in this moment, everything is alright.

Even if it feels suspiciously like pretending.

The night stretches on a little longer. Eventually, Bofur breaks out a little wind pipe. Bifur begins to clap on the table with silverware, and Dwalin slyly reaches under the table for his bow. Someone begins to sing an old mining song. Fili’s fingers are buzzing, his muscles are loose and his focus is dazed. Somewhere, in the corner of his eye or in the weight under his breast, he holds something odd. Like a dream, drifting when he tries to catch it, a flash of color ( _golden as the morning light_ ) or the taste of a name.

 

❦

 

Thorin arrives very suddenly, and very late.

He opens the door slowly and gracefully, filling up the frame despite being only half its height. A chilly wind blows into the tavern, making his dark hair and furs shift about him imposingly. He steps in slowly and surely, head held high, expression tight and regal.

Most of the inn’s patrons have sauntered off to their rooms, or out into the cool night towards their own beds, but the bar still seems to grow impossibly quiet. Thorin commands even the attention of the fire and the light, glowing under his cheekbones and the sharp line of his nose.

Fili smiles at him and waves him to the table, but privately thinks his uncle might be overdoing it. Just a little bit.

“About time, Oakenshield!” Dwalin says, slurring a bit, and rousing a small boyish grin from Thorin. “Was ready to start placin’ bets you wouldn’t show up ‘til we’d saddled up in the morning.”

“I was lead to believe this place would be easy to find.” Thorin looks pointedly at Gandalf, sitting where half the table seems to have forgotten him. “I got lost. Twice.”

Fili can feel his brother chuckling next to him, and gives him an elbow to the ribs for it.

“You would have been able to find it just fine if you’d left early enough and had light to read the road signs.” Gandalf says, sucking on his pipe.

Thorin doesn’t say anything to that, but unclasps his cloak and pulls a stool up to the end of the table. He smiles at his nephews. Gloin offers him a pint and a plate and he declines.

“I’ve already eaten.” He says. Fili looks at him suspiciously as his uncle’s jaw tightens. “There was great food and drink at council, for that it lasted four and a half hours.”

“Speaking of,” says Balin. “What news from our northern kin?”

“Did they all come?” asks Gloin.

“Aye,” Thorin answers, slowly. His eyes flicker between several faces at the table, and his mouth draws into a tight line. “Envoys from all seven kingdoms.”

There is a delighted murmur at the table, though they keep their voices low, even if they are alone in the tavern.

“So?” Dwalin leans forward. “Is Dain with us? The dwarves of the Iron Hills?”

“They will not come.” Thorin answers, sighing. “They say this quest is ours,” he glares at Gandalf, “and ours _alone.”_

“Now Thorin--” the wizard starts, but the dwarf tilts his head sharply and stops him with a raised hand.

“I did not expect your your hobbit to come, Gandalf. It is no fault of mine that he is absent.” He says, and nods towards Nori. “Other arrangements have been made.”

Nori nods back, though his neck, Fili thinks, is a little stiffer.

“The dragon will know him Thorin! He will know any one of you by smell alone, if he does not her you tromping towards him first!”

“Oi!” Nori barks indignantly. “I am a professional, I’ll have you know! I know how to cover my scent and keep quiet. A little mud masks smell better than you’d think.”

There is a round of appreciative whispering throughout the table at the cleverness of that idea. Fili watches Gandalf’s knuckles turn white, as though he is barely resisting slamming his fists into the table. Or perhaps into his uncle’s head.

“And what good is a _professional,”_ Balin drawls wearily, “if he cannot get into the mountain? You forget that the entrance is sealed. There is no way into Erebor.”

“Ah. Well.” Gandalf deflates visibly. He reaches into his robe and pulls out a slip of paper, and an iron key. “That is not entirely true, Mr. Balin.”

Fili watches Gandalf pass both to his uncle, and pull a light down from the ceiling to better see the scrap of paper unfurled on the table. Thorin is staring at them with a kind of awe Fili has never seen the likes of-- and supposes he should feel the same. A map and a key to a secret door in the halls of his forebears? It sounds like a storybook. The final chapter to a long and exhausting journey, delivered right into their hands.

But something about Thorin’s gaze, glittering and half-golden in the lantern light, makes something sharp and cold grip his heart. For a brief moment, he cannot feel the ground below him. He’s dangling helplessly, watching his uncle stretch farther and farther away. Something in the corner of his vision is trembling and honey-colored.

And then Kili claps an eager hand on his back, beaming. He suddenly can’t remember where he’s left his train of thought, until he watches Thorin pouring over the map in front of him, key clenched tightly in his fist. _A secret door._ Fili grins at his brother. He suddenly feels like a child, watching his uncle turn shadows into mountains by lantern light, making the small, rickety bed shared with his his brother but a minecart in the glittering cavern of a faraway kingdom.

“There’s a way into the mountain,” he says, and Kili squeezes his arm.

“A door,” his brother adds, voice in awe. “A secret door to get in.”

Gandalf nods. “If we can _find_ it. A dwarven door is invisible when shut. I do not have the skill to find its hidden position in this map…. but there _are_ others who do,” he says, looking pointedly at Thorin. “Unless you are so insistent on this quest being yours and yours alone, and would have us spend another six months looking for the entrance.”

Thorin scowls, twisting the key in his hands. Gandalf continues.

“You asked me to find the fourteenth member of this company, and so I shall. There is one… who is not my first choice, but a fine choice all the same.”

“And just where would we find this new burglar, Gandalf?” Thorin asks gruffly.

“On the path we already mean to take, of course.” Gandalf smiles, relieved when Thorin nods at him.

“Very well. But if your second burglar fails to join us, I will not look for a third. Nori will go.” He says with finality.

“That is agreeable.” Gandalf answers with a tight nod.

“Then the matter is settled. We leave at dawn. I suggest you all get some rest.” Thorin stands, showing no weakness, but there is something drained from his eyes that makes Fili think his uncle needs it the most.

The table breaks into a murmur again, chairs scuff the floor and yawns catch contagiously, breaking up the chatter. Fili watches his uncle crash foreheads with Dwalin and then Balin with a grin, and then slam shoulders with Bifur, and Oin respectfully. Then, he turns towards Fili and Kili with a tired, anxious smile.

Fili nods and smiles politely, but Kili rushes for him the second the path between them is cleared.

“I just saw you yesterday morning,” Thorin smiles, relaxing a bit, with an arm wrapped around his nephew’s shoulder.

“Felt longer.” Kili shrugs, squeezing his uncle enough to keep the air out of him, though Thorin doesn’t let on as much.

“Well?” Thorin says to Fili, his other empty arm extended towards him. “You would let your brother out do you?”

“In an embrace with an uncle who still smells of Ered Luin’s stables? Yes.” Fili sniffs. Thorin finally _laughs,_ his face loosening and his voice dark and bubbly and warm. He grabs Fili around the ribcage and crushes them both, lifting them straight off the ground in his embrace. Fili sputters, and Kili yelps, and his uncle laughs again before letting them go.

They lead Thorin up the stairs after everyone else, around the corner to a shabby room with three single beds that are much too large for any of them. Fili begins to lay his weapons down on a chair by the bed and unlace his boots.

His uncle shrugs slowly out of his mantle and coat, as though sore. It does not escape Fili’s attention that he rubs his stomach uncomfortably, or checks to make sure that the chamber pot is beside the head of the bed before he climbs in. He only barely remembers to tie his hair up before his head hits the pillow.

Fili moves to put out the candle beside him, and hands Thorin a half-full waterskin from his own pack.

“Thank you,” Thorin mumbles, sitting up again to drink it.

Fili smiles and nods, before he puts the light out and returns to his bed, against which Kili has pushed his own.

“I’m not even that tired, though.” Kili says with a yawn. Fili throws a pillow at him.

“You want a bedtime story?” Fili asks with mock-sweetness, and the pillow returns to him, square in the face.

“Peace.” Thorin mumbles exhaustedly.

Fili slides into bed. The sheets are not soft, but they are clean. He pulls the quilt on top of the bed up to his chin, sighing aloud when he can feel Kili kicking it back down again.

“Fee, scoot over!” his brother hisses, digging his feet into his brother’s back.

“Scoot your own bed over if you want more room!” Fili whispers back, pinching him hard on the leg.

“Quiet.” Their uncle yawns from the other side of the room. “To bed.”

Kili shuffles around a bit more and Fili hears Thorin roll over in bed with a grunt.

He begins to hum.

His brother stills, as though under some spell. Fili’s eyes drift close, the song carrying him somewhere far and familiar, someplace that is home and not. Half asleep, he finds himself mouthing the words along with his uncle. Thorin pauses softly between the lines, his voice growing quieter in the dark:

 

“ _Far over the misty mountains cold_

_To dungeons deep and caverns old_

_We must away, ere break of day,_

_To find our long-forgotten gold.”_

 

Fili falls asleep with his uncle’s voice gentle in his ears, and it gives him very uncomfortable dreams where he is not himself, like visions stolen from the memory of a stranger.

* * *

  


Pain wakes him.

It starts distant and tingling, then slams through his skull like a thunderclap. He runs a hand over his face, scream caught in his throat when his lumpy fingers press against his maw. It makes the pain rip through him anew, like his head has split cleanly down the middle.

He’s back in the bed, it seems.

He cracks his eyelids open and it is a great mistake. The light comes through the window, as white and sharp as teeth in his eyes. He slams them shut again, and can feel the vibrations pulsing around the front of his brain.

_Damn, damn and thrice bedamned._

He lies still a moment, trying to find the edges of his body, small and cramped and soft. Everything aches and his mouth tastes like burnt paper.

“M-Mr. Pendragon, are you…” a thin voice calls from beside him, fine like a needle in his eardrums. “Oh, please tell me you’re not _dead.”_

_The thief._

“Get away from me,” Smaug says, voice sputtering dryly in his throat. “What have you done, you wretched, _wretched_ creature, I--”

“Oh, good.” the voice answers with a nervous little laugh. “I’m afraid that was not a very good first impression, but at least you’re around for the second.”

Smaug flinches, another anxious trill that digs its fingers into the space just behind his eyes.

“Don’t get up, I-- I’m afraid I hit you rather squarely on the head, and you quite badly bruised your own shoulder. But nothing’s broken. I've cleaned up your-- mess.”

“Where am I?” Smaug asks, demanding answers if he cannot have peace.

“In your bed chambers, Mr. Pendragon.” he answers timidly.

“And why do you keep calling me that?” Smaug presses the palms of his feeble new hands into the sockets of his eyes, scattering little bursts of light across the dark behind his eyelids.

“Well--” the burglar pauses, with something like concern edging his voice. “It _is_ your name.”

At that, Smaug snaps his eyes open, forcing himself to turn towards the creature at the edge of the bed, disregarding the protest of his frail body. He blinks furiously at the little marauder, who is standing awkwardly at the foot of his bed. He’s wiggling his nose, and twisting his hands as though he doesn’t know what to do with them. Smaug curls his lip in a snarl and sits upright, only slightly impeded by the nausea that rolls up with him.

“My name is _Pendragon,”_ he says, disgusted. His voice is so much smaller, mutilated and stripped as his body. “And I am in my _bed chambers._ You know my name and you-- you are in my--” He stops, because he cannot say the word _house,_ vile and small and fragile as it is, and would rather rip his own tongue out and eat it before choking on the word _home._ Fury drops like hot lead into his gut. “ _You are--”_ he stammers, trying to find words poisonous as vile enough, but the anger is getting the better of him, shaking his wiry frame like a rotting beam under an immense weight.

“Bilbo Baggins,” the thief answers, mistaking the unfinished insult for a question. “It is… er, nice to meet you.”

“Nice,” Smaug hisses, only because he cannot at this point pry his teeth apart. “I would hardly call a _trespasser--”_

“Oh no no no, _goodness,_ no!” the creature stammers, pulling a thick piece of parchment from his coat. “Oh no _wonder_ you attacked me, oh my! I’m so terribly sorry, I thought you _knew!_ I did send a letter, but-- oh! No, I’m your new Steward of Estate! I’m here to manage you. Your affairs! I mean, I am here to manage your affairs. I arrived quite late lst night, I thought to introduce myself this morning, but it was, ah, I mean--” He squirms, rightfully. “It was probably not the best idea for someone with your, er, _disposition.”_

“ _What_ are you _talking_ about?!” he snaps, snatching the parchment from him. He breaks the seal with a sharp tug and tries to scan the words, small and tight, but they kick up his nausea and start to bleed into one another. _For your hospitality my sincerest thanks,_ he squints, head reeling.

“I-I didn’t mean anything by it!” Bilbo raises his hands defensively. “I mean, I publicly have considered myself a confirmed bachelor, if only to dissuade unwarranted guests and solicitations. I um. Well! It’s your own business to live alone because of… er, _social anxieties._ I really should have been more considerate--”

But Smaug does not hear him, drowned out by a rush of empty noise like coins pouring down around his skull. At the bottom of the parchment, in clear, bold letters, reads:

 

**DEED OF CONTRACT**

  


**SIGNED:** _Prifton S. Pendragon, Master of Pendragon Estate_

 **WITNESSED:** _Barliman Butterbur, Owner of the Prancing Pony_

 **STEWARD:** _Bilbo Baggins, Previously of Bag End_

Contract.

_Contract._

The line of his sight is suddenly gold and red, the color of fire and blood. He is keenly aware of the taste of metal in his mouth, breath ragged as though he is breathing around a huge, black iron arrow. Can feel it scraping like a cage around his furiously pounding heart.

His eyes flash up at the hobbit, who has gone quite pale by now, and he knows, _knows,_ as surely as he knows the taste of fire, because flesh prisons _bedamned_ he is still a dragon, and would still know the pull of something so dark and precious in his sleep, even in his _death,_ and he _knows:_

The Ring is not here.

“Get out,” he says, in a low voice, squeexing his eyes shut against something black and pulsing in his vision. The thief does not move, and Smaug can hear him breathing softly, still at his spot at the edge of the bed.

“M-Mr. Pendragon…?”

“ _OUT!”_ he shrieks, hand scrambling beside him, knocking hard into something wooden. His fingers close around smooth glass, solid and cool, and without opening his eyes, hurls it as hard as he can across the room. It smashes violently. He opens his eyes again and the hobbit is gone, the door swiftly shutting behind him.

* * *

  


Bilbo listens quietly for a few more minutes, to the sound of glass shattering and furniture being toppled. His left hand circles his right ring finger, twisting nervously.

Eventually there is a blunt thump, like something landing on the bed, and then the house is silent.

Well. _Well!_

He should leave. Pick up his unpacked suitcase and abandon this horrible man and his horrible temper, without so much as a “Good morning and good riddance.” Except that it is hardly mid-morning, and he has still not had breakfast, and the only tea he’s had a chance to brew yet is staining the floor of his new employer’s bedroom and-- well.

He did sign a contract, he remembers, nose twitching.

The quiet stretches into a slow and withering moment, and then at the end of the hall, and ancient oaken clock bellows loudly, inlaid with gold in the patterns of snakes.

This is how much of Pendragon Estate is. Long, dark wooden corridor upon corridor. Shany brass and gold glimmering in the shadow. The odd flash of deep red satin draped over the windows and intricate furniture. Everything is claw-footed, arching and twisted patterns inlaid in the wainscoting and wallpaper, and for all its meticulous detail, it feels every inch a coffin.

He decides that he hates this house. He hates it from the top of its high pitched roof, tiles all draped like wooden scales down to the flawlessly polished ebony floors. A home should not be so--unmarked. Unlived in. It’s unnatural. _(He remembers scratches across the landing, dark and deep in the veneer, under the heels of travelers. Dirt in his mother’s dining room from every corner of the world. Romantic as a fine white scar.)_

 

Bilbo crushes the memory like glass in the palm of his hand.

With a deep breath, he straightens out his waistcoat, and heads downstairs toward the pantry.

 

❦

 

If nothing else, at least the kitchen is some modicum of respectable. Although it is still too large for Bilbo to be comfortable, he finds that with the aid of a stepping stool he can maneuver quite easily around it. He lights the stove and fetches the kettle, rummaging around the pantry until, with a great relief, he finds a tin marked _bergamot_ and a little loaf of mostly fresh cinnamon bread.

He seats himself at the counter, facing the wide window above the sink. Idly, he wonders if it worth the trouble to unpack his bags. It occurs to him that he is alone in this house with Mr. Pendragon. If by some stroke of madness his employer does not decide to toss him off the property, he alone will be in charge of keeping this humongous monstrosity of an estate clean.

“ _Steward,”_ he sneers into his tea. “Of whom I’d like to know. Manservant more like. And cook, and laundress, and gardener, and _nanny_ \-- absolutely ridiculous. I will simply refuse.” His lips press into a thin angry line. He’s already signed the blasted contract. And left it in the man’s room. He’s just going to have to wait it out.

The kettle whistles and he picks through the cabinets to find a teacup that isn’t adorned with swirls and curls or gold-etched designs. He settles on a plain white mug that is far too large, but it _has_ been a testy morning. He deserves at least a little indulgence.

He is halfway through his breakfast, casually watching clouds roll across the sky, when he spots a smudged line of figures in the distance, just about where the road is. Curiously, he steps towards the sink, tea in one hand and toast in the other. Indeed, there is a crowd of thirteen dwarves-- _dwarves!_ heading east, packed tightly onto ponies with enough supplies to get them to Near Harad. One has twin swords strapped to his back, each as long as Bilbo’s legs. Another has the head of an axe jutting from the top of his skull. He nearly drops his mug when he sees the _wizard,_ strikingly tall and gangly amongst them, with an easy look on his face, as though he were conversing at tea.

“Oh my,” he murmurs around a mouthful of toast. For the briefest moment, his heart flutters in his chest with some urge, a feeling like ribbons in the wind.

He squashes it like an insect, and slams his mug down into the sink, violently yanking the curtains closed.

“ _Adventures,”_ he scoffs. Anger builds cold and heavy in his veins. “What dreadful business.

He dumps the remnants of his breakfast and washes his dishes with near-scalding water, watching his soft hands turn red and blotchy in the heat. 

 


End file.
